The expansion and contraction of muscles keeps us alive every second of every day. Even though it's such a basic part of our existance, creating artificial muscles has proven to be a bit more complicated. That is, until now. Scientists have recently found what could be a good solution: yarn full of wax. »11/16/12 12:40pm 11/16/12 12:40pm

There are no hospitals in space. The closest E.R. is back on Earth, and astronauts can't exactly jump in a cab to get there. So what happens if the sun burps out a massive blast of radiation while an astronaut is space-amblin' by? »2/08/12 12:00pm 2/08/12 12:00pm

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center scientists have created a new material that is ten times blacker than the blackest black paint in the world. It's made of carbon nanotubes grown on titanium. Why does NASA need this material? »12/05/10 9:30pm 12/05/10 9:30pm

Minuscule solar cells that can fix themselves using the same building blocks as plant cells have been demonstrated, with our old friend the carbon nanotube one of the key components that holds these self-healing power units together. »9/06/10 11:00am 9/06/10 11:00am

Wireless checkout is many a grocer's dream. It's like Amazon's one-click shopping in the real world, maximizing efficiency for the customer and cutting costs for the supermarket. A new printable RFID tag could make it a reality. »3/27/10 12:42pm 3/27/10 12:42pm

Johnny Cash can't have known about carbon nanotubes when he sang about rings of fire, but MIT scientists have shown how they can create electrical current—about 100 times as much energy per unit of weight as lithium-ion batteries. »3/09/10 2:40pm 3/09/10 2:40pm

A bacterium on its own can't reach very far. And when stacked on the sea floor in a large colony, it may have access to either oxygen (top of the pile) or food (bottom of the pile). »2/25/10 11:40am 2/25/10 11:40am

Nanotech wonder Buckypaper is 10 times lighter and 500 times stronger than steel. And while academic research labs have successfully synthesized the stuff for years, the first architectural firm has just made Buckypaper on their own. »2/22/10 4:40pm 2/22/10 4:40pm

A technique known as nanolithography was used to build these Obama faces, combining 150 million carbon nanotubes to construct each individual half-millimeter visage. Depending on your political leanings, the result is either the cutest wittle powitician ever or proof that science, in the wrong hands, will engineer…
»11/04/08 6:20pm 11/04/08 6:20pm

Scientists at Tsinghua University in Beijing have just perfected a process by which nanotubes can be coaxed to emit sound, allowing for the construction of ultra-thin, transparent, flexible 'speakers', demonstrated above affixed to a waving flag. Unlike normal speakers, which produce sound with direct vibration,…
»11/04/08 6:15am 11/04/08 6:15am

Carbon nanotubes have been
popping »9/30/08 6:07am 9/30/08 6:07am Giz for a while, touted as one of the next wonder-materials—but a new development in their manufacture means they may not remain "future technology" for long. In fact the work of a team at CSIRO and the University of Texas at Dallas means that commercial-scale production of sheets…

Ah nanotubes. Is there anything you
can't almost possibly do »8/14/08 6:20pm 8/14/08 6:20pm? Well, now you can add bouncy cellphones to the list because a team of Clemson University researchers have developed a way to make beds of tiny, shock-absorbing coiled carbon nanotubes which could be used to cushion objects from damaging impacts. They hope…

Japanese researchers have developed a new material capable of stretching to roughly twice its natural shape while conducting electricity—before snapping back with no damage to the circuit. It's essentially a rubber polymer filled with carbon nanotubes, and it could be used to create anything from a curved…
»8/08/08 9:18am 8/08/08 9:18am

According to legend, University of Tokyo professor Masayuki Nakao was bitten by a radioactive ramen bowl when he was a kid, which gave him the ability to spit 1-micron-wide bowls made out of silicon—full of dozens of 20-nanometer-think carbon noodles floating in an ethanol soup—at supersonic speeds. Or maybe he did… »5/29/08 9:30am 5/29/08 9:30am

A new study has found that carbon nanotubes—if inhaled—could be as dangerous as asbestos. This is not only problematic for a future of semiconductors that would like to exploit the technology, but the goods already on the market now that use nanotubes in composite mixtures, like baseball bats and tennis rackets. »5/20/08 6:40pm 5/20/08 6:40pm